Following an ugly day of closing arguments where defense attorneys painted Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black man chased and killed by a trio of white men last year as an unstable criminal, the prosecution wrapped up proceedings with a rebuttal staunchly challenging the trio’s claims to self-defense. 

Travis and Greg McMichael, a father-son duo, and William “Roddie” Bryan Jr., are accused of chasing and murdering Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia last February. After more than 10 days of proceedings that have often been emotionally charged, closing arguments finally concluded on Tuesday. 

Urging jurors to wrestle with whether they could trust the McMichaels’ defense  prosecutor Linda Dunikoski asked the panel, plainly, to hold the men to account.

“Ladies and gentleman, here’s the thing: This is not about whether these three men are good people or bad people. That’s not what this about. It’s about responsibility. It is about holding people accountable and responsible for their actions,” she said.

Further, she emphasized that the jury should weigh the actions of all three defendants as equal. Though it was Travis McMichael who pulled the trigger and killed Arbery, Greg McMichael helped him chase Arbery in the pick up truck and then attempted to control the narrative at the crime scene after Arbery lay dead in the middle of the street. 

“They were working together, Greg and Travis McMichael. That’s why they are both responsible. You think Greg McMichael is not a murderer? Yes he is. He is just as big of a murderer as Travis McMichael,” Dunikoski said. 

As for Williiam “Roddie” Bryan Jr., without his chasing Arbery towards the McMichaels men, “we would not be here,” she added. 

Further claims by the defendants that they were merely acting under the color of their experience—like Travis McMichael’s assertion that he was operating on ‘muscle memory’ training from the U.S. Coast Guard when he stopped Arbery and ordered him to comply—also didn’t make the grade, the state argued. 

Travis had no badge, no uniform and no authority.

While Travis McMichael argues he was merely conducting a citizen’s arrest before having to defend himself against a purportedly menacing Arbery; critically, the prosecution noted Tuesday, McMichael never bothered to tell Arbery what he was doing when he demanded the young man stop.  

“Never once, never once did he tell Mr. Arbery he was under arrest,” Dunikoski said.  

A day earlier, during Monday’s closing arguments, Arbery was depicted grotesquely and as a criminal intruder by defense attorneys.

At one point, Laura Hogue, Greg McMichael’s attorney, said: “Turning Ahmaud Arbery into a victim after the choices that he made does not reflect the reality of what brought Ahmaud Arbery to Satilla Shores in his khaki shorts with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails.”

The comment was believed to be referencing the condition of Arbery’s feet as found by a medical examiner after his death. It was also intended to suggest that Arbery was not in the neighborhood to jog as prosecutors contend, but rather, he was there intending to burgle a vacant property. 

For Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mother, the comment was a desperate attempt by defense to gin up a case against her son, who is not on trial. 

“I thought it was very, very rude to talk about his long, dirty toenails and to totally neglect that my son had a huge hole in his chest when he was shot with a shotgun,” she told CNN late Monday.

Arbery’s mother added: “I think the defense is doing that because they know they don’t have the proper evidence to get a conviction so they are actually going to any measures to get a conviction which is not there for them.” 

The McMichaels and their neighbor Bryan Jr. have plead not guilty to multiple charges including malice and felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and criminal attempt to commit a felony.

The defense insists that a string of area robberies triggered the McMichaels to be on edge but the prosecution on rebuttal Tuesday tried to unwind those arguments for jurors.

Dunikoski told jurors that “stale gossip” gleaned from Facebook—as Travis McMichael testified was the case when on the stand last week—did not rise to the standard required for a citizen’s arrest. 

“Facebook alone does not give you probable cause to arrest somebody. Rumors in the neighborhood do not give you probable cause alone to go and arrest somebody,” she said Tuesday, urging that a person must see a crime being committed in real time to reach the citizen’s arrest criteria.

The prosecution equally hammered away at the self defense theory. 

“One can use lethal force in self defense but only under certain circumstances. You can’t claim self defense if you are the unjustified initial aggressor, meaning, if you started it. Who started this? Wasn’t Ahmaud Arbery,” Dunikoski said.

An armed convenience store robber does not get to defend himself against the clerk he is robbing, she emphasized.

“In this case, they committed four different felonies, including aggravated assault with a shotgun. They started it, they do not get to claim self defense and of course, provocation. You can’t force someone to defend themselves against you so, you can claim self-defense, this isn’t the wild west,” she said.

The defense on Tuesday attempted to move for a mistrial. Again. This time, defense counsel told Judge Tim Walmsley that they objected to Dunikoski’s description of a citizen’s arrest.

They have moved for a mistrial no less than three times over the course of the trial.

Judge Walmsley appeared mildly exasperated for a moment, gently throwing his hands up, palms to the attorneys, as he denied the request. He told them that jurors would have the legal definition available to them for deliberations, not just what defense dubbed the prosecution’s “interpretation” of the law.

Before sending jurors off to deliberate, Judge Walmsley did reiterate the definition. 

As the rebuttal careened toward its conclusion, prosecutor Dunikoski also pressed the jury to consider whether they could trust what Travis McMichael has said since he has been in court facing the murder charges. 

Dunikoski played a video on Tuesday recorded on Feb. 23, 2020. Travis McMichael can be seen, moments after Arbery is spotted running down the street, hopping into his truck to give chase. 

“He told you he was not going to chase or investigate someone who was armed,” Dunikoski said.

And once trial, McMichael offered a sea of “maybes” during testimony recounting his conduct. 

“’Arbery may have run by, maybe he has broken [into the house]… maybe Arbery was caught, maybe Ahmaud Arbery is running from the police,” Dunikoski said, quoting McMichael.

“He doesn’t know anything. These are all the maybes he testified to,” she said, noting how McMichael even admitted that he only “assumed” Arbery was committing a crime when he stopped him. 

While the defense team has maintained that McMichael was curious but courteous when stopping Arbery, Dunikoski played back for jurors an arguably damning audio clip from a 911 call.

McMichael is heard breathlessly speaking to the officer before he is heard screaming on the call at Arbery, “Stop! God damn it, stop!”

At this moment, a camera in the courtroom trained on Travis McMichael showed the defendant shifting his chair, eyes darting about the chamber. 

“Do you believe for one minute that he was really talking softly to Ahmaud Arbery?” Dunikoski asked jurors. “Do you think this Travis McMichael who took the stand is the same person from Feb. 23 or do you think this is trial prep Travis McMichael?”

The jury has now had the case turned over to them for deliberations and a verdict is awaited. 

For a look back at everything from Monday, check out the live blog here.